News report showing that CCW is "ineffective"

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Pretty much. This is along the same lines as people saying "CCW reduces crime". Most states, see very little change in their crime rates after ccw passes (aside from normal variations, and crime has been on the downward trend for some time).

I don't care if crime doubles when CCW is passed.. if it's not CCW holders committing the crime, it's irrelevant.

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But one interesting thing to note...in the last 20 years, the violent crime rate has gone DOWN SIGNIFICANTLY according to FBI Stats (and one of the most significant trends in the last 20 years has been the rise of states passing shall-issue laws and the significant increases of people getting permits).

I think it would have been great if they had brought that camera crew to my university. I would have sat there quietly until the"bad" guy came in the room and took aim at the gloved good guy. Then I would have squatted beside my desk, pointed my finger at him and yelled five times bang! bang! bang! bang! bang! You're dead!

If they asked what I thought I was doing, I would simply say: I'm the armed citizen you didn't know about. You're dead. If need be, I would have then opened my coat to show them the Glock 19 I carried every day at PSU.

Funny isn't it...violent crime has been FALLING STEADILY as the number of states issuing permits and number of people getting permits has steadily been on the increase.

So, who here has been hearing any of this on the news...the steady drops in violent crime...???

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I don't dispute crime has not been falling steadily for several years... I just don't like people saying it's "because of CCW". CCW may have an effect, but I'm sure there's a myriad of other issues that do as well.

I think it would have been great if they had brought that camera crew to my university. I would have sat there quietly until the"bad" guy came in the room and took aim at the gloved good guy. Then I would have squatted beside my desk, pointed my finger at him and yelled five times bang! bang! bang! bang! bang! You're dead!

If they asked what I thought I was doing, I would simply say: I'm the armed citizen you didn't know about. You're dead. If need be, I would have then opened my coat to show them the Glock 19 I carried every day at PSU.

But one interesting thing to note...in the last 20 years, the violent crime rate has gone DOWN SIGNIFICANTLY according to FBI Stats (and one of the most significant trends in the last 20 years has been the rise of states passing shall-issue laws and the significant increases of people getting permits).

Funny isn't it...violent crime has been FALLING STEADILY as the number of states issuing permits and number of people getting permits has steadily been on the increase.

So, who here has been hearing any of this on the news...the steady drops in violent crime...???

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Well, you might say that the fear of prosecution and lengthy hard time incarceration caused it, but, yeah, I think that might be wrong.

Would it be that traditional core family values are coming back. We can hope, but probably not.

Maybe it IS because more people are drawing their weapons when threatened resulting in no crime committed, or the attacker wounded or DRT. I mean, that's the way it is in some movies, right? There are movies that celebrate the use of firearms by average citizens to defeat crime, aren't there?

I think it would have been great if they had brought that camera crew to my university. I would have sat there quietly until the"bad" guy came in the room and took aim at the gloved good guy. Then I would have squatted beside my desk, pointed my finger at him and yelled five times bang! bang! bang! bang! bang! You're dead!

If they asked what I thought I was doing, I would simply say: I'm the armed citizen you didn't know about. You're dead. If need be, I would have then opened my coat to show them the Glock 19 I carried every day at PSU.

Wouldn't they be surprised ...

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While I like your style; and I'm fully aware that those kids in the video were, 'programmed to fail', (If the U.S. military taught recruits to handle firearms like that we'd all be speaking Arabic. ) I'm, also, surprised to notice you admit to frequently carrying a concealed pistol at Portland State University. Can you really do that?

Click on the YouTube link...does it not go to VPC Videos. They are promoting, endorsing the video. Stolen from ABC News? Yeah, and ABC News is the unbiased fair and balanced source for reporting on firearms?

As I said, rephrased, anything put out by, promoted by, endorsed by, used by VPC should not be considered accurate reporting of anything connected to firearms and their legal use.

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No arguments from me, just messing with you, mixing metaphors. I'm sure ABC is no better than VPC on 2A issues...

Well, you might say that the fear of prosecution and lengthy hard time incarceration caused it, but, yeah, I think that might be wrong.

Would it be that traditional core family values are coming back. We can hope, but probably not.

Maybe it IS because more people are drawing their weapons when threatened resulting in no crime committed, or the attacker wounded or DRT. I mean, that's the way it is in some movies, right? There are movies that celebrate the use of firearms by average citizens to defeat crime, aren't there?

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Hard to say which is correlation and which is causation.

If there was a breakdown by state/year as to how the stats are going down, is there a knee in the state/year where shall issue is approved? Has the crime rate dropped by a similar rate in the few states where CCW is rare, NY, DC, IL?

I would think it'd take a few years to show any effect, until the #s of permit holders increased over time.

There's an increasing number of articles in the local papers where robbers and permit holders run into each other, but Detroit is probably not representative of the country as a whole. And they probably make the papers because its out of the ordinary, there's a LOT of robberies that don't make the papers out here.

Its even possible the "war on drugs" has actually helped, by keeping potential muggers in prison on drug charges.

I don't think the thought of running into a permit holder deters criminals any more than running into cops. They aren't good at risk analysis. And if they really thought running into permit holders was a problem, I think they'd change tactics and actually shoot rather than threatening to shoot at the outset of the robbery. Most of the robber/CCW encounters have surprise on the side of the CCWer, because they do NOT expect to run into a permit holder, allowing the CCWer to prevail.

Don't get me wrong, people absolutely ought to have the right to CCW so that the few who do happen to run into robbers have a fighting chance to control their own destiny.

I'm just not convinced that shall issue is behind the drop in crime rates.

Randy, are you familiar with the various reports that between 1,000,000 and 2,000,000 times a year (depends on the report) a firearm is used to stop or prevent a crime?

Would those numbers be the same if fewer people were carrying for self defense?

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Point taken, those cases where no shots fired, displaying the weapon is enough to scare off the robber. That's really a shame, because they won't show up in any official stats, often no shots fired, no police report to file, so it's really hard to quantify accurately. When I say that, I'm not trying to dispute or downplay those numbers, they may well be accurate. For all I know those numbers may be too low, rather than inflated.

I have to wonder if a significant # of those may in fact not represent crimes prevented so much as crimes delayed, though. Junkies still need their fix, some other victim is going to get held up in short order, one who is not armed. Robbers are non-union, so they don't have to quit at a certain time, they'll look for another victim until they find one...

Having said that, I'm all in favor of making sure I'm not the guy that gets robbed at that moment in time!

Also, let me be clear I'm not saying CCW has had NO effect on crime, clearly it's worked quite often in cases where robbers stumbled onto a CCWer. I'm just disputing how much of the drop in the crime rate is attributable to CCWers. I don't think there's enough of us out there to be solely responsible for it, there's too few of us out there, its still relatively rare when a robber runs into one of us. I think there's more going on than just us.

If you carry responsible and take it serious, and you practice so that drawing and coming on target becomes muscle memory you won't get the gun caught in your shirt. You don't get that from a 15 minute "this is how you make a gun go boom" session. I was going through active shooter training on the day of Sandy Hook, and I amazed myself with how quickly I reloaded and got back on target. The reason is because I have trained and dry fired enough that it became automatic for me to do that when the gun was empty. It took time to get there. That's why this has no basis on reality.

While I like your style; and I'm fully aware that those kids in the video were, 'programmed to fail', (If the U.S. military taught recruits to handle firearms like that we'd all be speaking Arabic. ) I'm, also, surprised to notice you admit to frequently carrying a concealed pistol at Portland State University. Can you really do that?

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PSU is an interesting place with some unique issues.

Besides the fact that the campus is split in half by a city park (the park blocks) all of the streets and most of the sidewalks are city (public) property. There were also some buildings, at one time, that housed both public and University operations. For instance, the book store, which is a private entity but is in the campus and shares building with a restaurant.

On top of that it is the place for LEOs in the Portland Metro area to pursue continuing education opportunities.

I know, at one time, the University had a "If they have a permit, or are LE and permitted, we are fine with it" policy, but that was years ago and administrations change.

Could be the get tough on crime measures that have been popular for so long, 3 strikes laws, war on drugs. Anything that keeps more criminals locked up longer.

Look at NYC, they also have had drops in crime, largely attributed to Guiliani's "broken window" policing model. Certainly not due to relaxed CCW laws.

I tend to be skeptical by nature, and tend to be even more skeptical of theories I'd love to be true, like "ccw reduces crime". I try to dig deeper because I assume I'm biased in favor of that theory.

I am not suggesting I am more likely to be right in this case than you. The jury is still out, IMO, just suggesting alternate theories, really. Stats are one thing, the tricky part is figuring out the reasons behind why the numbers end up as they are. Easier to establish correlations than causations.

Could be the get tough on crime measures that have been popular for so long, 3 strikes laws, war on drugs. Anything that keeps more criminals locked up longer.

Look at NYC, they also have had drops in crime, largely attributed to Guiliani's "broken window" policing model. Certainly not due to relaxed CCW laws.

I tend to be skeptical by nature, and tend to be even more skeptical of theories I'd love to be true, like "ccw reduces crime". I try to dig deeper because I assume I'm biased in favor of that theory.

I am not suggesting I am more likely to be right in this case than you. The jury is still out, IMO, just suggesting alternate theories, really. Stats are one thing, the tricky part is figuring out the reasons behind why the numbers end up as they are. Easier to establish correlations than causations.

I don't dispute crime has not been falling steadily for several years... I just don't like people saying it's "because of CCW". CCW may have an effect, but I'm sure there's a myriad of other issues that do as well.

Well, you might say that the fear of prosecution and lengthy hard time incarceration caused it, but, yeah, I think that might be wrong.

Would it be that traditional core family values are coming back. We can hope, but probably not.

Maybe it IS because more people are drawing their weapons when threatened resulting in no crime committed, or the attacker wounded or DRT. I mean, that's the way it is in some movies, right? There are movies that celebrate the use of firearms by average citizens to defeat crime, aren't there?

Click to expand...

I am not someone that thinks Shall Issue laws and the increase of responsible law abiding people carrying concealed weapons is "THE" reason for the drop. I am someone that rather adamantly believes that there are ALWAYS reasons...it never is solely because of "just one thing". There are always many contributing factors. I do, however, believe that it is one of the many contributing factors.

I was one of those expecting a big explosion of crime from the economic downturn, but I was wrong. Even in Detroit most crimes are down. The one exception is homicides, unfortunately. That's mostly rival drug dealers and gang bangers settling disputes.

I agree with Dosei, there's a lot of factors, and certainly CCW is one of them.

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